A decision support framework to evaluate the sustainability performance of urban road transportation

This study proposes a decision support framework (DSF) based on two data envelopment analysis (DEA) models in order to evaluate the urban road transportation of countries for sustainable performance management during different years. The first model considers different years independently while the second model, which is a type of network model, takes into account all the years integrated. A multi-objective programming model under two types of uncertainties is then developed to solve the proposed DEA models based on a revised multi-choice goal programming (GP) approach. The efficiency scores are measured based on the data related to several major European countries and the factors including the level of freight and passenger transportation, level of greenhouse gas emissions, level of energy consumption, and road accidents which are addressed as the main evaluation factors. Eventually, the two proposed models are compared in terms of interpretation and final achievements. The results reveal that the efficiency scores of countries are different under deterministic/uncertain conditions and according to the structure of the evaluation model. Furthermore, efficiency changes are not necessarily the same as productivity changes. The high interpretability (up to 99.6%) of the models demonstrates the reliability of DSF for decision-making stakeholders in the transport sector. Furthermore, a set of managerial analyses is conducted based on different parameters of the performance evaluation measures for these countries including the productivity changes during the period under consideration, resilience of the countries, detection of the benchmark countries, ranking of different countries, and detection of the patterns for improving the transportation system.